papery whispers: “Raising those black boys as if they were family. Talk about Christian sacrifice.”
The sanctuary is a hot cave. The tiny openings at the foot of the towering stained glass windows aren’t big enough to let air in, and the three giant fans that hang from the ceiling merely redistribute the heat. The smell of our church—of chalky plaster and dusty carpets and dark, moldy spaces—is as familiar to me as the smell of our home. We’re here every Sunday morning and evening, and during grade school, we’d return for Wednesday night Catechism class and Saturday morning Calvinettes and Cadet meetings.
I rifle through the pew back and pull out a fan, a tongue depressor stapled to a cardboard square. The one I pick has a picture of a little girl in a pink dress clutching a Bible on it, and I put it back and choose another, this one of a quaint white chapel surrounded by autumn trees. New England somewhere, a fantasy church I’ll never see.
At the front of the sanctuary, the choir director, Norm Seetsma, brings the choir to climax and then stillness with a series of epileptic movements. The singers sit in unison, and the men pat their foreheads with white hankies.
Reverend Dykstra steps through a side door to the left of the choir and climbs a small carpeted stairway to the pulpit. He’s a small man in his forties, with a fat pink head and bulging gray eyes that make him look like he’s about to cry. He raises the arms of his black robe in a silent benediction—a giant vulture stretching its wings—and heads bow around me. His robe billows as he blesses us, stirred by a small fan at his feet.
In the pew in front of us, the Van der Slew spinsters, Hansje and Uda, sit side by side in matching blue pillbox hats, their heads wobbling faintly. Spinsters and widows make up much of the congregation. They clump together in groups of two or three, sometimes accompanied by a crusty artifact of a man.
Our church is dying.
The young blood has drained to those modern churches where the preachers wear jeans and the choirs have been replaced by musicians wielding electric guitars. But we Calvinists ignore these changes, stubbornly clinging to our creeds and ceremony even as Reverend Dykstra urges his shrinking flock to “dig extra deep” during the offerings, which more and more frequently are taken twice during each service.
We rise to sing “Lead on, O King Eternal”—Mother’s soprano soaring above the voices around us—before sitting for the first collection.
Elders in dark suits move down the aisles shepherding brass offering plates up and down the pews, and I place the fifty cents Mother gave me onto the red velvet circle on the bottom. The elders, deacons, and ushers are all men. When I was in grade school, I wanted to be an usher like my brothers but was sent downstairs to the nursery instead. That’s where the women work, in the basement—changing diapers, organizing potlucks, and teaching Sunday school. In the basement, out of sight.
After another hymn the elders make a second sweep up the aisles, this time carrying silver trays containing cubes of Wonder Bread and glass thimbles of red wine, the Body and Blood of Christ. As I pass the wine tray to Mother I inhale the syrupy aroma and long to taste it.
David, Jerome, and I are the only worshippers in sight with empty hands. None of us have stood before the congregation to make Public Profession of Faith and proclaim Jesus Christ as our Personal Lord and Savior, so we can’t take Communion. Our classmates at Lafayette Christian all made Profession in seventh or eighth grade, but the three of us have held out. I don’t know what the boys’ reasons are, but I know my own: During the Professionceremony, you must swear to forsake the secular world, and I’m not ready to do that yet. There are too many secular things that I like. Van Halen. MTV. Dancing. My friend Elaine, a Jew.
Behind the pulpit, Reverend Dykstra pinches a piece of Christ
The sanctuary is a hot cave. The tiny openings at the foot of the towering stained glass windows aren’t big enough to let air in, and the three giant fans that hang from the ceiling merely redistribute the heat. The smell of our church—of chalky plaster and dusty carpets and dark, moldy spaces—is as familiar to me as the smell of our home. We’re here every Sunday morning and evening, and during grade school, we’d return for Wednesday night Catechism class and Saturday morning Calvinettes and Cadet meetings.
I rifle through the pew back and pull out a fan, a tongue depressor stapled to a cardboard square. The one I pick has a picture of a little girl in a pink dress clutching a Bible on it, and I put it back and choose another, this one of a quaint white chapel surrounded by autumn trees. New England somewhere, a fantasy church I’ll never see.
At the front of the sanctuary, the choir director, Norm Seetsma, brings the choir to climax and then stillness with a series of epileptic movements. The singers sit in unison, and the men pat their foreheads with white hankies.
Reverend Dykstra steps through a side door to the left of the choir and climbs a small carpeted stairway to the pulpit. He’s a small man in his forties, with a fat pink head and bulging gray eyes that make him look like he’s about to cry. He raises the arms of his black robe in a silent benediction—a giant vulture stretching its wings—and heads bow around me. His robe billows as he blesses us, stirred by a small fan at his feet.
In the pew in front of us, the Van der Slew spinsters, Hansje and Uda, sit side by side in matching blue pillbox hats, their heads wobbling faintly. Spinsters and widows make up much of the congregation. They clump together in groups of two or three, sometimes accompanied by a crusty artifact of a man.
Our church is dying.
The young blood has drained to those modern churches where the preachers wear jeans and the choirs have been replaced by musicians wielding electric guitars. But we Calvinists ignore these changes, stubbornly clinging to our creeds and ceremony even as Reverend Dykstra urges his shrinking flock to “dig extra deep” during the offerings, which more and more frequently are taken twice during each service.
We rise to sing “Lead on, O King Eternal”—Mother’s soprano soaring above the voices around us—before sitting for the first collection.
Elders in dark suits move down the aisles shepherding brass offering plates up and down the pews, and I place the fifty cents Mother gave me onto the red velvet circle on the bottom. The elders, deacons, and ushers are all men. When I was in grade school, I wanted to be an usher like my brothers but was sent downstairs to the nursery instead. That’s where the women work, in the basement—changing diapers, organizing potlucks, and teaching Sunday school. In the basement, out of sight.
After another hymn the elders make a second sweep up the aisles, this time carrying silver trays containing cubes of Wonder Bread and glass thimbles of red wine, the Body and Blood of Christ. As I pass the wine tray to Mother I inhale the syrupy aroma and long to taste it.
David, Jerome, and I are the only worshippers in sight with empty hands. None of us have stood before the congregation to make Public Profession of Faith and proclaim Jesus Christ as our Personal Lord and Savior, so we can’t take Communion. Our classmates at Lafayette Christian all made Profession in seventh or eighth grade, but the three of us have held out. I don’t know what the boys’ reasons are, but I know my own: During the Professionceremony, you must swear to forsake the secular world, and I’m not ready to do that yet. There are too many secular things that I like. Van Halen. MTV. Dancing. My friend Elaine, a Jew.
Behind the pulpit, Reverend Dykstra pinches a piece of Christ
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